One of the unexpected plusses of Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s book on the dangers of thimerosal, the ethyl mercury vaccine preservative: It is being greeted by another round of excruciatingly erroneous authoritative-sounding pronouncements claiming that the tiny, tiny -- truly, truly, teeny and tiny -- amounts of mercury are OK if not actually good for you.

No. As I believe Will Redwood put it, injecting mercury in babies on purpose is stupid. Out of the mouths of babes and infants comes the truth. Out of the mouths of the Mercury Drinkers comes a defense of injecting mercury in babies that is just plain astonishing:

"It doesn't matter what Bobby Kennedy, Jr. does -- the only thing is what the data show," Paul Offit said. "The question is, are the levels [of mercury] contained in vaccines shown to be harmful? And the answer is no. Thimerosal is ethyl mercury, not environmental mercury, and it's excreted from the body far more quickly ... Breast milk contains far higher [mercury] levels than you would ever get from vaccines."

The CDC is happy to chime with its usual insipid statement: "Thimerosal has been used safely in vaccines for a long time (since the 1930s) and has a proven track record of being safe." It's safe because it's safe because we say so.

Actually, it is not safe and it has a proven record of causing autism, starting with its use in the 1930s in pesticides and vaccines, before which autism didn't exist, after which it started popping up with increasing frequency -- first in families with backgrounds in pesticides and vaccination. Tell me why, if it's got nothing to do with autism, the father of the second child ever diagnosed with autism was experimenting with the ethyl mercury dust Ceresan at the same time his child was born? (While the pediatrician mother of Case 7 was promoting infant vaccinations with ethyl mercury?) It was poison in 1937, it's poison now. It was poison in pesticides (and long ago removed), it's poison in vaccines -- but still injected into tens of milliions of babies a year. ("Ethyl Mercury" is visible below Wheat in black type.)

This doesn't dissuade those who think we're all lotus-eating idiots. Journalists are drinking the mercury right along with the best and brightest vaccine zealots. "Most fundamentally, Kennedy does not get chemistry," wrote Jeffrey Kluger in Time. Prepare to eye-roll: "Thimerosal is an ethylmercury product. Mercury in general may be a neurotoxin, but it’s in its methylmercury form that it does its damage—and only in particular concentrations. The quantity of ethylmercury that was once in vaccines was so small that it was actually within acceptable limits for the more toxic, methyl form—but it wasn’t even in that methyl form to begin with." Yes, this makes absolutely no sense. What wasn't in what?

"Sticking up for thimerosal -- Read the studies -- it's safe," was the headline on a Slate piece by Arthur Allen in 2005 when Kennedy spoke out the first time.

We've seen this kind of denial when it comes to medical mercury not just for years, not just for decades, but for centuries, as Mark Blaxill and I outlined in our book. First it was a supposedly great thing to treat syphilis with mercury rubs. Then doctors and pharmacists started whipping it up in brandy and chocolate for the unfortunate sufferers, who slowly but surely just got sicker. After that, doctors and pharmacists started injecting it and missed the fact they were creating the worst manifestation of the disease, general paralysis of the insane.

Then, when family members exposed to those treatments started developing their own strange symptoms that Freud grouped under "hysteria," nobody noticed what medicinal mercury had wrought once again. And early pharma companies including the predecessor to Glaxo starting mixing it in teething powders and caused Pink disease, which they never noticed.

Then came autism, triggered again by reckless medical use of mercury. And once again, no one in the medical establishment noticed; when others did, they set on them like cackling vultures.

One thing Offit and ilk like to recite is that the dose makes the poison, a truism of toxicology, as if a little radioactive pixie dust sprinkled over things couldn't possibly be a problem. Well, with mercury, the dose and the susceptibility make the poison. The Cincinnati scientist who figured out mercury caused Pink disease noted it only affected 1 in 500 children who also were given teething powder, children who got the same dose as those who weren't affected at all. That's because mercury affects different people differently, he noted. (Offit has said the affected 1 in 500 kids probably just got a whopping dose of teething powder. This is the kind of evidence-free nonsense you have to stoop to once you start defending mercury in medicine.)

A deeper understanding of the history of medicine reminds us that people who run the leading medical organizations of their day always believe the reign of error is behind them; that they are the icons (and idols) of a golden age of progress upon whom God has chosen to shine the rays of His particular favour.

In fact, these are the bad old days, the dark ages, all over again, and worse. The Mercury Drinkers are still in charge, doing more damage with their misbegotten ideas than ever. We're up against half a millennium of medical malfeasance and the people sworn to protect it with our lives.--

Comments

Again, Associate Professor Chris Preston of Adelaide University comes to disrupt AoA with pointless remarks just as some other members of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum do elsewhere on the internet.

He is now down to numbers of the "angels on pinheads" kind.

He claims vaccination "is playing a role in maintaining the rarity" of hepatitis infection.

Pakistan with a population of 180 million has had on average just 250 cases of any kind of hepatitis infection each year over the past 21 years as shown by the paper he linked to.

Preston implies that is attributable to hepatitis vaccination whereas low rates of that order are seen all over the world irrespective, as already noted from a very recent cited BMJ paper for the UK and five other European countries with no universal hepatitis vaccination programme.

So here one can see Preston making such comments seemingly quite intentionally just for the purposes of disruption.

In addition, it seems it is pointless vaccinating children 1) because the rates of infection are so very low 2) it is a disease in adult drug abusers and practitioners of unsafe sex and 3) because the protection from the vaccine drops off to nil in 54% of recipients within 5 years. So by the age of six years more than half the children vaccinated from birth can have no protection from the vaccine against the disease well before they become sexually active:

If Associate Professor Preston cared about children he would not continues to post on AoA on such less than marginal matters. That he does continue to post in such a manner allows scope for the opinion that he is commenting to disrupt and for amusement. That is supported by what he does elsewhere - adding his often repeated phrase to his comments "Always happy to help" when he does this kind of thing repeatedly and continuously.

He has not used that on AoA yet. Doing so would make what he is doing far too obvious.

"Whilst the risk factors for babies have changed little, there is now impressive evidence that for a preventive measure, hepatitis B vaccine is remarkable for the frequency, variety and severity of complications from its use. The toxicity of this vaccine is so unusual that, even if crucial data are regrettably concealed or covered by Court order, scientific evidence is already far higher than normally needed to justify severe restrictive measures.“

Chris Preston asks (Re Hepatitis B in the UK):-
"I would rather see data than an anecdote from the 1960s."

Hep B is now notifiable in the UK, but during the 1960s, this disease was so rare no statistical records were kept.
For those interested, here is some up to date information about Hep B prevalence in the UK, still very low at 0.3%, and almost exclusively confined to travellers/ immigrants, from countries where Hep B is endemic. I was given immunoglobulin before a trip to the Far East:-

http://www.hpa.org.uk/MigrantHealthGuide/HealthTopics/InfectiousDiseases/HepatitisB/
From above:-
"In the UK, the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection is estimated to be 0.3% (approximately 180,000 people).
In any given year, the majority (96%) of chronic hepatitis B infections added to the existing numbers of such infections in England and Wales, are likely to be in individuals born in countries with an intermediate or high prevalence. Hepatitis B immunoglobulin is available via Public Health England."

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hepatitis-b/Pages/Introduction.aspx
From above:-
"There is a vaccine thought to be 95% effective in preventing hepatitis B. Because of the relative rarity of hepatitis B in England, the vaccine is not given as part of the routine childhood vaccination schedule.
Vaccination would usually only be recommended for people in high-risk groups, such as:
People who inject drugs or have a sexual partner who injects drugs.
People who change their sexual partner frequently.
People travelling to or from a part of the world where hepatitis B is widespread.
Healthcare workers who may have come into contact with the virus.
Pregnant women are also screened for hepatitis B. If they are infected, their baby can be vaccinated shortly after birth to prevent them also becoming infected."

Associate Professor Chris Preston of Adelaide University again engages in behaviour typical of one too many from Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum.

In the face of clear documented cited evidence that vaccination programmes cannot be responsible for negligible rates of hepatitis b incidence in at least six western world countries he comes back to seek to argue the contrary.

He now argues it is not true he claimed "low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination".

But that is exactly what he did claim. The UK is part of the "Western World" and that is what he claimed for the "western world" [including those five other EU countries].

But to resile from that he now also argues the UK [and by implicationi the five other European countries we cited here below from a BMJ paper] are not part of the "Western World".

So not only does he not seem to understand science but he also does not seem to understand the fallacious logic he is applying to his own arguments nor it would seem political geography.

1) the western world includes the UK [and five other EU states we cited] with no universal hepatitis b vaccination programmes and negligible rates of hepatitis b incidence;

2) but according to his argument hepatitis b vaccination is still responsible for the low rates of hepatitis b infection in the western world.

He also now argues:
1) the UK might an exceptional case;
2) but is not prepared to accept an anecdote to prove it;

when not only are the facts easily checked online but we also cited a BMJ paper confirming the UK and six other countries have no universal hepatitis b vaccination programmes and negligible rates of hepatitis b infection.

We are grateful to him for this further demonstration the approach of some of the members of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum.

Do also note that he provides scant evidence of anything but like other BadScience Forum members keeps on asking questions implicitly demanding others answer them.

More BadScience Forum tricks. All in all none of this is mature behaviour.

The EPA and FDA are so transparently corrupt that I don't know how any of them can show themselves in daylight. From the Washington Post (and everywhere else today, it seems), an article about how after the seafood sellers association, The National Fisheries Institute, was upset over the decrease in seafood sales, get this:

"The FDA’s new recommendation comes after an FDA study revealed one in five women were avoiding fish during pregnancy. “Emerging science now tells us that limiting or avoiding fish during pregnancy and early childhood can mean missing out on important nutrients that can have a positive impact on growth and development as well as on general health,” said Stephen Ostroff, the FDA’s acting chief scientist, in a statement."

Not only is the EPA and FDA telling women who will become pregnant, who are pregnant and who are breastfeeding to eat fish, but they have outrageously proposed a MINIMUM intake of up to 12 ounces a week so they don't miss out on the lean protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

Not so fast says Consumer Reports, who against the FDA's shameless industry protecting recommendation, warns pregnant women to avoid all tuna.

But it gets better.

Consumer Reports did their own tests of mercury levels in tuna and found twice what the FDA found in 2005.

And from mercury flu vaccine promoting Harvard:

“The brain undergoes a series of complex developmental stages that need to be completed in the right sequence and at the right time,” according to Philippe Grandjean, an adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. He told Consumer Reports that the mercury in fish consumed by the mother could reach the fetus within hours and do permanent damage."

But it's ok to inject pregnant women with mercury containing vaccines? Is it because instead of hours it will only take seconds for the mercury to reach the fetus and "do permanent damage"? Did Dr. Grandjean just explain why some children appear to be born with autism?

And how is it that Consumer Reports can warn against eating fish with mercury but be silent about the government recommendation and population wide practice of injecting vaccines containing mercury?

Chris Preston you ask:-
"What intrigues me is why you wrote: “Prof Preston claimed "low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination when there was no general hepatitis b vaccination programme in the UK at the time."” when that statement is not true?

I was quoting from a CHS comment,(below). It's a fact that Hep B vaccinations are not and have NEVER been part of the child vaccination schedule in the UK. It's also a 'fact' (as you pointed out) the UK is not the only Western World country.

I assume your contention is the UK was not quoted separately by you, but was lumped in with the US and other 'Western World' countries, some of which do Hep B vaccinate children, for the purposes of 'proving' Hep B vaccinations have dramatically reduced the incidence of the disease.

As John Stone points out, there is NO proper scientific data available to back up this assertion. In the US babies routinely receive Hep B at birth, regardless of any parental history of possible Hep B infection risks. The figures which have been used to support this vaccination programme, have apparently been 'plucked out of thin air'. As John Stone informs us,(see his comment), the CDC stated:

“Before 1982, an estimated 200,000--300,000 persons in the United States were infected annually with HBV, including approximately 20,000 children.”

This is plainly WRONG and nothing more than scaremongering propaganda. This kind of thing is on a par with a recent Welsh Health Authority spokesperson claiming before MMR vaccine, 'millions of UK persons contracted measles and hundreds of children died annually'. This was not only a load of rubbish, but since measles in the UK is notifiable, and accurate statistics are publicly available, was a blatant lie, aimed to scare people into getting the MMR vaccine, by claiming a measles 'epidemic', even though the ACTUAL cases at the time were in single figures. The Welsh Government also grossly inflated the number of infections.

Of course Dr Wakefield was dragged up yet again as someone to 'blame' although he always advocated child vaccination against measles. A large number of babies under a year old were administered MMR vaccine, (and given another dose at the normal time). In view of the recent research into the TIMING of MMR vaccine administration being critical in possible autism development, the Welsh Health Authorities have a lot to answer for.

Hep B is a classic example of a vaccine which is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of Western children. It is time to reassess its use in the US and other countries, Western and otherwise.

Chris Preston is splitting hairs. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that Hep B was not endemic in most parts of the Western World before the vaccine was said to have eradicated it. For instance this from an article by Cia Parker is instructive:

"The topic had turned to the hepatitis-B vaccine, given to all newborns in the U.S. while they were still at the hospital, beginning in 1991 (at the beginning of the autism epidemic). I put up information I had found in Dr. Bob Sears’ The Vaccine Book, a link to a CDC report with a chart at the bottom showing the rate of hep-B diagnosis in children 1-9 from 1986, five years before the vaccine program began.

"The chart at the bottom of the report clearly shows that the rate at which hep-B was diagnosed in children was less than one per 100,000 or fewer than 360 a year in a childhood population of 36 million in 1990. The text at the top of the report, however, states: “Before 1982, an estimated 200,000--300,000 persons in the United States were infected annually with HBV, including approximately 20,000 children.” The source for this large number was an article in Pediatrics in 2001. It uses the word “estimated” because this is a purely speculative figure, not based on the disease being diagnosed by blood tests carried out by physicians."

UK was just one good example, generally considered to be in the Western world. CHS listed five others apart from the UK. So, Preston is again relying on fantasy figures designed to prop up public health policy, just as he used the Baxter study to project modern rates of autism on to older populations.

Jenny Allan, I am willing to consider that conditions in the UK may be different to other parts of the Western world with respect to the role of vaccination in hepatitis B infection; however, to do so I would rather see data than an anecdote from the 1960s.

What intrigues me is why you wrote: “Prof Preston claimed "low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination when there was no general hepatitis b vaccination programme in the UK at the time."” when that statement is not true?

Chris Preston states:-
"The WHO states that mother to baby transmission is the most common form of transmission world wide. The fact that this type of transmission is relatively rare in the Western world is entirely down to vaccination."

I know all about Hep B transmission, having worked in a blood lab during the 1960s. In those days plasma samples were sucked up and transferred to test tubes via pipettes. How I never got infected God only knows, but a few other lab staff members did catch the infection. Hep B was greatly feared then and there was no vaccine. For the uninformed, Heb B, like AIDS, is transmitted via blood and body fluids, and yes, also like AIDS can be passed from mothers to their babies in utero or via breast milk. Another common transmission source is drug addicts sharing needles. Blood transfusions are still a risk, although in the UK, blood is now screened for Hep B and AIDS.

In the UK, lab staff and researchers dealing with blood products and bodily fluids and wastes, demanded a Hep B vaccine be made available. It was, but most 'mothers' are not lab workers or druggies. Hep B was and still is a rare disease in the Western World. This is nothing to do with vaccination, just a historically low prevalence.

Associate Professor Chris Preston of Adelaide University has kindly provided an example of what he does elsewhere. It is typical of some of the behaviour of some who are members of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum.

He posts seemingly plausible claims which in fact for those who know better are just not true.

Chris Preston either does not understand or "chooses" not to understand that if rates of hepatitis B infection are low in the UK without a vaccination programme then they will be likely to be low in other parts of the "Western World" with or without one.

He originally claimed that "mother to baby transmission" .... "is relatively rare in the Western world is entirely down to vaccination."

That clearly is not true. UK infants do not get infected because their mothers are not infected. And that is down to there being 1) no need for an hepatitis B vaccination programme and 2) no such programme.

This is not even science. It is just basic logic but Preston seems not to understand it.

And rates of acute infection in other "Western World" countries without a hepatitis B vaccination programme are very low just like the UK.

Hepatitis B has always been more prevalent in high risk groups in Western Countries and initial programs were designed to combat specifically populations where Hep B was endemic - for instance in the case of Australia Indigenous Aboriginal populations and health care workers primarily were targeted.(1981-83)

A second HepB Vax was introduced in 1987 and a major public health program targeting adolescents before they became sexually active was begun some time later.

It wasn't until 2000 in Australia that the Hep B birth dose was introduced.I believe this would be reflected in health programs in Canada and the US ...

"In countries where the prevalence of chronic HBV infection is low (<2%), the major routes of HBV infection include sexual contact with an infected person and percutaneous exposure to needles and other “sharps” that have been contaminated with HBV (this includes injecting drug use and tattoos with absence of a precautionary perception). Vertical transmission from infected pregnant women to their newborns can occur but is rare.1,2 In Canada, the major risk factors associated with acute HBV infection include injecting drug use (19%), non-injecting drug use (9%), and high-risk sexual activities such as having multiple sex partners (13%) and sex with HBV-infected individuals (13%). About 8% of the infection cases are related to health care including blood or blood transfusion, hemodialysis, surgery, and dental surgery.4

It's an important topic to debate but you may need to develop more depth and knowledge to your arguments.

Jenny Allen, just to correct a misconception. I have never written about hepatitis B in this manner

"low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination when there was no general hepatitis b vaccination programme in the UK at the time."

The comment I made is I believe:

"The WHO states that mother to baby transmission is the most common form of transmission world wide. The fact that this type of transmission is relatively rare in the Western world is entirely down to vaccination."

When I was doing geography at school, the Western World included much more than the UK.

I should also point out that vaccination for hepatitis B is available on the UK NHS and is recommended for certain groups of people, including babies of women at high risk of having had hepatitis B.

"As for ad hominem comments, I don't like them either, but most of the other points made by CHS, regarding Prof Preston's career and previously published misinformation on other blogs were relevant to the arguments on this thread."

I think the only thing we disagree about is the use of personal comments to support a perfectly valid and well evidenced argument. I think we are on the same side here.
I agree to differ on ad hominem. Reserve the 'guns' for enemies.

You point out the evidence of Chris Preston's comments here suggests one might form the opinion Preston either misunderstands or lies. So either way, it is relevant to his comments on AoA here and now. It is directly relevant to the issues being considered. It is not completely irrelevant and so not ad hominem.

If a person chooses to engages you in argument is found to be wrong in his arguments either intentionally or not, his arguments are to be questioned and his comments to be taken to be of questionable veracity.

And he is not "Professor Preston". He is "Associate Professor Preston" which is some way short of "Professor".

Fair enough, but I regard ad hominem comments as unhelpful and irrelevant to 'science'. I strongly suspect Prof Preston understands only too well, as do many other vaccine damage 'defenders' and as 'For Common Sense' has pointed out:-

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

or (from other comments elsewhere) - If you want to not find something, you look where it is NOT, and of course that old 'smoke and mirrors' metaphor seems to apply here.

As I said, you were quite correct to point out Prof Preston claimed "low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination when there was no general hepatitis b vaccination programme in the UK at the time."

Did he misunderstand the relevant sources? or did he not bother to research this properly? or did he just lie?..... forgetting UK persons comment on this thread too.
You decide!!

"Science" is a wide territory. Perhaps we would have to go back centuries for any single person to understand everything that was known (or at least thought to be known). Does Chris Preston not understand that the genetic theory of autism has been thoroughly disproven - it appears not, or perhaps he is just pretending in order to pull the wool, hanging on to the small conjectural influences as if they are the main issue?

“I'm routinely backed up six months for new patients,” said Norwood, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Council on Children with Disabilities.

Norwood thinks there is more awareness of these conditions and that some, including autism, are truly rising in prevalence. Autism is thought to result from genetic flaws interacting with many other factors. Some studies have suggested these may include parents' age and prenatal infections.

Ad hominem or argumentum ad hominem is where a claim is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim.

Here it is not irrelevant: we gave specific examples showing Chris Preston does not understand science. That is a matter of fact. And it is relevant to someone who comments on the web on these kinds of issues as if only he understands science and others do not. It demonstrates his opinions and arguments are not to be taken seriously. That is relevant in this particular case and not irrelevant.

ChildHealthSafety
Stating commenters 'don't understand the science' is a favourite troll's trick, specifically designed to detract attention from the deficiencies of the so called 'scientific' paper being 'discussed' at the time. I've had this accusation thrown at me lots of times, and ignore it!! Since none of us can possibly know anything about another person's 'understanding' of scientific methodology and conclusions, only that they disagree with our own stances, then this accusation IS an 'ad hominen' comment and to some extent devalues our own arguments, however relevant they may be.

Sticking stubbornly to and repeating, unassailable facts is the best way. There's nothing wrong with 'opinions', but they are NOT science, and remember, it takes time to influence public perceptions. I've no doubt we are winning the arguments. If we weren't, the trolls wouldn't bother with us!!

I'm afraid I was taught 'science' the old ways!! Statistical studies were meticulously planned, with pre-determined 'error limits' and some complicated equations which determined whether or not findings were 'significant' or could be regarded as being within normal limits. No computer software data handling programmes for me, where a few clicks of the mouse can get a desired result!!

Some of the stuff called 'epidemiological' studies, being inflicted onto an increasingly sceptical public these days, would have my old tutors turning in their graves! Many of these studies, are nothing more than a rechurning of old discredited data, with all conclusions 'extrapolated' (i.e. projected into the future, i.e. pure GUESSWORK!!) Madame Zuleika with her crystal ball would do as well!!

John O'Neill came to AoA to cast doubt on the fact that the ASD data used for the Reichenberg paper "Advancing Paternal Age and Autism" is directly comparable being ASD diagnoses using ICD10 and standard modern diagnostic criteria. That data demonstrates extremely low rates of autism in Israel prior to 1988 and practically non-existent Aspergers rates. This demonstrates there has been a massive increase in Aspergers and pandemic increase in autism in Israel and directly undermines the new Brugha paper as very poorly done research. [What we called the new Brugha paper in our prior comments here on AoA is also called the Baxter paper in other comments here.]

John O'Neill claimed his misquoting of the Reichenberg paper was a mistake and that he admitted it [Comment: August 18, 2014 at 05:56 AM].

But in the very same comment John O'Neill goes on to claim regarding exactly the same point:

"So comparing this rate with current rates of ASDs surely isn't a good comparison?"

So he was caught doing it, claimed it was a mistake and then did it again.

After he did that we asked him specifically whether it was deliberate or a mistake. The jury is not "out" on this one. He was given the chance to "fess up", claimed to "fess up" but then did the same again.

"As for ad hominem comments, I don't like them either, but most of the other points made by CHS, regarding Prof Preston's career and previously published misinformation on other blogs were relevant to the arguments on this thread."

The comments we made about Associate Professor Preston not understanding science are not made for ad hominem purposes but are pertinent because he comments all over the internet [including what seems to us an obsessive and compulsive interest in CHS] citing "science" to other people when as we have demonstrated he simply does not seem to understand it.

In other words, if he cites "evidence" for his points of view, it is likely not worth very much so people should really not take any notice.

The Baxter paper [which we have referred to here as Brugha's new paper] is a case in point. The fact Brugha is associated with it is bad enough but as others who have commented here have shown, it is sorely lacking in evidence, having missed out most of the countries in the world and having ignored relevant evidence like that of Israel showing a massive increase in Aspergers - and a pandemic increase in autism.

We gave specific examples here of Associate Professor Preston citing identical/fraternal twins as evidence ASD's are solely "genetic" illustrating how he fails to understand the interaction between genes and environmentally caused disease and of his claims low rates of hepatitis b in the UK are attributable to vaccination when there was no general hepatitis b vaccination programme in the UK at the time.

Now those examples appear to show Associate Professor Christoper "Chris" Preston citing pseudo-science to advance his own deeply held personal beliefs, absent real science and evidence.

He is one of Dr Ben Goldacre's BadScience Forum members which, for those who know, speaks volumes.

CHD8 accounts for less than 1/6 of 1% of ASD cases and is also related to gastrointestinal disorders such as colorectal cancer, therefore because of the high co-morbidity of GI diseases and disorders in Autism it may not be related to key autism function at all.

But let's be kind and say CHD8 that it relates to as much as .16 of ASD cases can Chris verify mutations in CHD8 are not related to intersections with the environment ?

I was able to obtain the paper by Baxter, Brugha, et al. Don’t waste money to purchase it.

My son is 51 years old. He suffered severe injuries at birth (cephalhematoma + oxygen insufficiency). He was excluded from public kindergarten because they could not work with children who could not talk. Part of the pain was that there were so few children with autism back then.

Chris Preston, you say that autism is a condition of developmental delay. That’s what the pediatricians wanted us to believe. NO, autism is a condition of maturational failure; development of language circuits is disrupted. The cause is not going to be found in epidemiological research. Most important is to understand the precise impairment in the brain, which is the result of many causes: prenatal rubella infection, prenatal exposure to valproic acid, oxygen insufficiency at birth, toxic metabolites from genetic disorders like PKU.

Jaundice at birth is also associated with autism. The brain areas affected are well known. The same brain areas are affected by asphyxia at birth, and jaundice is only dangerous following asphyxia. Neonatal antibiotics and synthetic vitamin K damage the same brain areas, as does valproic acid. The brainstem auditory pathway is most severely affected, because nuclei in the auditory pathway have higher metabolism than any other area of the brain.

The articles on twins all report birth complications. STOP talking about heritability. Much more can be said about the brain and vaccines, especially hepB at birth, but most eyes have glazed over before getting down to this last paragraph...

Discussing heritability without mentioning epigenetics is easily used to obscure the truth. Many non-scientists understand the basics of Mendelian genetics, but many of the same people have never heard of epigenetics or have no idea what the term refers to. Scientists who study epigenetics understand that even diseases traditionally considered purely genetic may be influenced, for better or for worse, by epigenetic factors such as environmental toxins. With today's level of knowledge in the scientific world, you just can't talk about the genetic causes of disease in twins vs the rest of the population without discussing epigenetic factors. It is flawed science to do so.

I have now managed to consult a copy of the Baxter paper, and although I cannot claim to have digested all of it I find this statement extraordinarily interesting:

"Our review identified prevalence data for ASDs from
18 out of the 187 countries included in GBD 2010.
These studies included samples up to 27 years of age
with no population-representative data found for
adults meeting our inclusion criteria."

Without checking all the age ranges and dates from all the studies this would seem to suggest a gigantic leap into projecting prevalence data onto older populations.

I have to admit I immediately wondered when Chris Preston started to badger us about a study which was out of immediate reach whether he was trying to be deliberately misleading. This would seem to answer in the affirmative.

He complete ignores the point that identical twins will be likely have identical exposure to identical environmental factors.

And that is a perfectly sound and scientific explanation for the papers he cites on identical twins having differing higher ASD concordance than fraternal twins.

He instead carries on cherry-picking and not answering.

We made the point earlier his does not understand science and clearly he does not.

Whether or not anyone has a genetic make-up which predisposes them to a particular condition does not make that condition "genetic". Many people are predisposed to various conditions but do not develop them until exposed to some other environmental factors.

And some people never get common illnesses. Does that mean that is genetic? Clearly not but the way Preston is going he will eventually have to assert that to get out of the problem he has right now.

But you seriously misquote Reichenberg's Advancing Paternal Age and Autism. Now either that is deliberate or an error? Which is it?

Reichenberg found 8.4 in 10,000 for autism and Aspergers was much rarer. And that was for 17 year olds diagnosed by the Israeli Draft Board according to modern ICD 10 criteria. These individuals were 17 year olds given draft board medicals in the years 2000 to 2005 inclusive.

Brugha's new paper completely ignored highly reliable data like that showing Israel has seen an explosion of Aspergers cases and a pandemic of autism since the 1980s.

For his earlier UK paper Brugha "invented" a new completely non-standard non-calibrated method of diagnosing Aspergers which exaggerated the numbers.

The rate then claimed for children was 1 in 100 for all ASD [Aspergers and autism].

Brugha came out with 1 in 100 just for adults with Aspergers. He did not even try to measure any adult autism cases. So here you can see his newly invented method of diagnosis severely exaggerating the figures for adults.

According to the figures from Brugha's earlier paper if adults with autism were added in then the total burden of ASD in adults was far higher than in children at the time.

Thus again showing Brugha had chosen methods which exaggerated the figures.

But Brugha also allowed his earlier paper to be used to claim the rate in adults was the same in children. Very naughty of naughty Professor Brugha.

And also according to the figures in Brugha's earlier paper if adults with autism were to be added in then the total burden of ASD had decreased substantially in children compared to adults.

But then in his new paper he claims the rate has not changed anywhere in the world - contradicting his previous paper. Ha!

So which one is true? Clearly, as Brugha is involved we believe neither and the foregoing supports that contention.

LOL. Great bit of research.

Try as you may, to obsfuscate that is the position.

So was it a mistake or did you intentionally misquote Reichenberg's paper?

Bruce Ames is indeed the Godfather of identifying carcinogens and mutagens.

THIMEROSAL in flu vaccines at the high amounts needed to get it to give an extra half a per cent protection from flu at the expense of dozens who get huge sums to keep quiet about their POLIO like health demise DIRECTLY from a MERCURY containing vaccine that can only be described as like LEMON JUICE by a criminal mafia composing of the TRIAD of:

Governments, Vaccine Makers and Regulators.

I am most happy that another person is interested in AUTISM and hopefully in ending the suffering shared amongst the

52 MILLION

that currently have this disorder.

My email

johnfryer@orange.fr

If Chris cares to send his copy of the papers he wants discussed and I would be happy to write an article directed at those issues for all to join in and keep on topic.

I make it that the spurious content out numbers that on mutagenic mercury in vaccines where it is known the safe amount is 0 ppm, 0ppb or 0ppt for safety of our next generation when vaccinated.

"The ISAC records of individuals registered during the childhood years of the cohort almost exclusively indicate a diagnosis of autism. Second, although we were unable to reassess subjects in our cohort because cohort members in this study are anonymous, we have been ascertaining subjects with autism from the ISAC registry as part of another study. The Autism Diagnostic Interview–Revised is administered to these subjects. Twenty-two such subjects were born during the years of the present study cohort, and diagnostic criteria for autism according to the Autism Diagnostic Interview–Revised algorithm were upheld for all 22 subjects."

So not a lot. I think it is debatable the extent to which the change in criteria altered the rate of diagnosis.

It is irrelevant isn't it? First of all in this case we haven't even identified what the genetic factors are. Secondly, as far as I know there are no non-genetic people (though there are some rather wacky philosophers at Oxford working on that) so no one would doubt that some people would be more susceptible to environmental challenge than others, but it is putting the cart before the horse. As 'CMO' commented here the other day:

"Should they not be looking for the Ebola gene??? Which determines why some do not catch the virus ??? This should only take a About 20 years, why fuss with treatments."

A more detailed reading however, reveals that the diagnosis rate of 8.4/10,000 is specifically of a diagnosis of autism, and not other ASDs. From the "ASD Outcomes" section of methods:

"For 2 reasons, however, it is safe to assume that most individuals with ASD diagnoses met ICD-10 criteria for a diagnosis of autism per se. First, these individuals were originally diagnosed and followed up during the 1980s and early 1990s, when the diagnosis of autism was narrow and uncommon, and diagnoses of ASD such as Asperger syndrome were rare (Asperger syndrome was assigned a unique ICD-10 diagnostic classification code only in 1992). The ISAC records of individuals registered during the childhood years of the cohort almost exclusively indicate a diagnosis of autism."

So comparing this rate with current rates of ASDs surely isn't a good comparison?

John Stone, I get the feeling you don’t understand the concept of heritability very well. In short layperson’s terms it is the proportion of phenotypic variation that is due to genetic factors and it is calculated on a population basis, not an individual basis. So heritability of 0.4 would mean 40% of the variation in the trait is due to genetic factors.

So for example: both my children have a rare X-linked genetic disorder. They both got the alleles from their mother, but there was a choice of two alleles, so there was only a 50% chance either would have the condition. Despite the genetics being well understood, one is much more affected than the other. The difference is to do with the environment when their ion channels were forming.

The importance of the latest paper is that if correct it means that there is negligible difference in ASD rates across the world and over the past 2 decades. That means that environmental factors that have changed dramatically in the past 2 decades and are differentially spread across the world (like vaccines or great dollops of Roundup) cannot be to blame. What should be looked for is some other variation that occurs temporally over short time periods rather than spatially.

And no John if heritability estimates are different in different papers, it is because of differences in the underlying populations tested, not because heritability is not present.

So your quote does infact come from the Reichenberg paper but is somewhat out of context:

"Prevalence estimates of ASD increased dramatically during the past 2 decades,5,6 from approximately 5 cases to 50 cases per 10 000 children.5,6 The increase is partly artifactual, owing to improved diagnostic accuracy, changes in diagnostic criteria, earlier detection, and increased awareness of types of ASD other than autism.7 However, it may also partly reflect a true increase in the incidence of ASD.8"

But, actually, it is an assessment of 17 year-olds in the mid-2000s (none born after 1988) with an incidence of 1 in 1190, 8.4 in 10,000.

It is not very clear what paper you are quoting. As to the Reichenberg paper, the data is the data. There he is pursuing the marginal/red-herring issue of parental age (with too few cases to draw any conclusions) while ignoring the tell tale evidence of very low incidence from that birth cohort of the mid 80s as diagnosed in the mid 2000s. Oh dear!

"The increase is partly artifactual, owing to improved diagnostic accuracy, changes in diagnostic criteria, earlier detection, and increased awareness of types of ASD other than autism.7 However, it may also partly reflect a true increase in the incidence of ASD."

So hardly conclusive evidence either way - and that wasn't what the paper was studying anyway.

OK, we have 19 pairs of monozygotic twins in the Tanaia paper (I can see that from the abstract) which is not many. Hallmayer ends up with the concept of "moderate heritability" but "heritability" falls somewhat short of genetic determination. Certainly there is more concordance between monozgotic twins than dizygotic, but even that does not show that any them would necessarily have been autistic without environmental exposures to vaccines, great dollops of Round Up etc. Actually, if we have some studies with more statistical concordance and some with less it will be the negative evidence against genetic determination which will hold the day. Clearly the Hallmayer paper concludes that environment is very important. The genetic hypothesis is floating dead in the water.

Now, how about you attend to (1) the Israeli army draft figures (2) how Brugha obtained his politically correct 1% figure in his English survey.

John Stone, the Japanese study lists in Table 1 concordance for ASDs of 18 from 19 pairs of monozygotic twins. That would be 95% or close enough.

I haven’t asked you to comment directly on a study that you cannot read. I have criticised you for dismissing as wrong a study that you have not read. Your local University library is sure to have access and they may let you read it there without having to pay for the publication.

The real reason for posting it is that it is part of a growing body of scientific research about ASDs that is suggesting they are much more common than previously thought and have been that way for some time. This raises some interesting issues regarding the causes of ASDs, how individuals are identified and the appropriate management to put in place. Indeed, has our ability to detect ASDs become counter-productive?

I think these are issues worthy of discussion.

What has been interesting among the commentary here is that no-one has asked for any specific details about the study. In my first comment I gave a summary of the results of the study. No one has asked “how did they come up with that conclusion?” or “what data did they use?”. I would be happy to share. I can’t of course post the whole study without a breach of copyright.

Actually, I have just noticed that Jenny Allan did ask a few questions. I am sorry I missed them before, but here goes:

“So the entire world was studied for 'geographical differences' and it all averaged out at 1 in 132 persons, so that's OK. Er -What about the 1 in 68 now the 'official' US rate?”

The values were generated on a regional basis from the published literature. Total prevalence of ASD for North America were reported as 8 per thousand with uncertainty ranging from 7.4 to 8.8 per thousand. For males alone it was 12.6 per thousand.

“or the UK rate 1 in 55?”

Total prevalence of ASD for Western Europe was reported at 7.5 per thousand with uncertainty ranging from 6.8 to 8.2 per thousand. For males alone it was 11.9 per thousand.

“What 'diagnostic criteria' were eliminated?”

None as far as I can determine. The main effect of diagnostic criteria was changes that broadened the definitions.

“I assume NO child was actually given a proper psychological/neurological assessment from a qualified practitioner?”

The literature examined included studies where children were assessed individually for the study as well studies that relied solely on administrative data to determine prevalence. The authors report that “studies that used more comprehensive epidemiological case-finding methods were associated with substantially higher prevalence estimates compared with less comprehensive studies such as those that used administrative data”

“How much taxpayer's cash was wasted on this waste of time propaganda?”

During this entire period there was a severe form of ME which coincidently disappeared with the elimination of USPULUN (a chlorophenol based mercury compound - hydroxymercurichlorophenol). Coincidence? Difficult to say except the rise and fall of this malady has eluded solution.

In the 1970s through to 1999 it was clear that most deaths/severe illness were coincident to DTP and/or flu and mostly DTP arguably causing SIDS. (Arguably not according to the vaccine industry. Strange that!

In fact the claimed worst case vaccine for inducing harm would be 1 DTP 2 flu with 3 MMR coming a very poor third.

Cleaning up DTP (taking most mercury out) has meant a fourfold drop in SIDS. Coincidence some say (the vaccine industry)

Flu is very often given to older people so SIDS and autism are not an issue.

Look at adjudicated settlements and see most health issues are today just from the flu vaccine - the only vaccine with old amounts of mercury still in them.

COINCIDENCE? (So the vaccine industry would tell us.)

DTP or any combination of these three has now dropped to a very poor second place.

And Guillain Barre Syndrome is virtually indistinguishable from what we knew of as polio. Coincidence?

Today we have no need for the iron lung as portable breathing packs vastly outnumber all the iron lungs ever in existence. Not funny this.

The only known mercury containing vaccine in large amounts coincident to it being far and away the most problematic vaccine today. Not from vaccine opponents or safe vaccine demanders but from the highest courts in our land. Those ONLY concenred with sorting out vaccine harm to the nations people.

The vaccine industry seem to have a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card for MURDER and GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM.

John O'Neill asks:-
"Would Childhealthsafety like to comment on the content of the study to which Chris Preston linked?"

I think we have all made it perfectly clear that ridiculously expensive paid links are not welcome here unless we are given details (NOT 'cherry picked' ones) about the contents. If Chris Preston is an "Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide", as stated by CHS, then he will have free access to scientific papers and journals, paid for by his University.

As for ad hominem comments, I don't like them either, but most of the other points made by CHS, regarding Prof Preston's career and previously published misinformation on other blogs were relevant to the arguments on this thread.

I think Prof Preston's comment about John Stone not being 'bothered' to read the expensive article he linked to, was insulting. John made it perfectly clear, (as I did), he was simply NOT prepared to pay!!

It obviously is a deceitful, troll gambit to ask people to comment directly on a study when there is a pay wall, unless you mean to make the paper in some way available to them. This does not mean a great number of points raised below have no relevance, notably Prof Brugha's past form, solid evidence of much lower levels in the past etc.

Would Childhealthsafety like to comment on the content of the study to which Chris Preston linked, rather than simply indulging in a personal attack on Mr Preston and his credentials? It does come across a bit like "if you don't like the message, shoot the messenger."

Australia is in general one of the least tolerant societies in the world. [All those isolated communities, Ockers etc]. Ultra conservative. Orthodoxy is the order of the day.

All manner of harassment, bullying and abuse is being used there to get parents to conform to dictatorial government health policies. Benevolent fascism does not even come close.

Not surprising Brugha was recruited to claim autism has always been at current levels to bolster their attacks on parental freedom of choice and the avoidance of serious and seriously under-reported vaccine adverse reactions.

It is very curious that in Preston's prevalence paper the whole thing is Queensland based, apart from the recruitment of Brugha as a senior author: a man with experience at whipping up the numbers from nowhere in adult populations?

Chris Preston does not seem to understand science and has difficulty interpreting properly scientific phenomena. This is perhaps why at his age he has never managed to get past Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide, specialising in "weed management". So his opinions on the new Brugha study are not worth much.

Take his twins example. We all know twins are likely to be together a lot of the time in childhood because Moms often look after them and cannot be in two places at once, so twins are likely to be exposed to the same environment pretty much 100% of the time.

What it means is that when identical twins get the same exposures to the same environmental factors they respond identically because they are genetically identical. Preston cannot comprehend that. And what non identical [fraternal] twins show is that when they are exposed to the same environment only about 30% respond in a similar way to the environment. Preston's "science" cannot comprehend that either. It also means they go and get their shots at the same time on the same day with everything that day and week and month being pretty identical for them too. Preston does not want to admit that.

Now Preston already knows all this because he is an avid reader of CHS. But he still makes worthless points on blogs because he enjoys butting in on other communities on the web to start worthless arguments and taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of others who have difficulty seeing through his BS.

He has for example claimed rates of hepatitis in the UK are very low because of vaccination. But there is no hepatitis vaccination programme in the UK. So he has made the point for it not being needed but he will promote any kind of vaccination even pointless vaccination programmes like hepatitis.

Thank you for the information. I heard a few years back that all the top food allergens were components of vaccine production. I remember also that at the time some type of shellfish was in the top ten/twelve or so of allergens. I wasn't sure if it qualified as an allergen that had anything to do with vaccine production? Still, from your information there does seem to be a connection to a component the vaccine industry uses.

A brief Google search seems to suggest that the conventional wisdom is a tendency to develop allergies is inherited (genetic or environmental in origin?), but specific allergies are not. That may implicate more strongly specific vaccinations received by each individual or other specific exposure history (though I'm not confident that a large portion of allergy/sensitivity doesn't go unrecognized, and conventional wisdom, more than equal to being cavalier about mercury in medicine for instance, may not be worth bringing into the discussion).

To Chris Preston -and anyone else who thinks it's a good idea to post a link to a paper which is ridiculously expensive to access-and then accuse us of not having read it!! -We all have better things to spend our money on.

If you want to argue the relative merits of some autism research paper or another, then kindly paraphrase or quote something about the methodology, the ACTUAL data findings, and the conclusions, in order that we all know what's what and can make up our own minds about the integrity of the research paper. Believe it or not, some people here are actual doctors and scientists, who know how research projects SHOULD be conducted, and can tell if they are poorly done or the results 'fiddled'.

Plainly, the Japanese study you mention does not offer 95% concordance - I should guess you've muddled it up with a confidence interval.

As to the Haringey figures you are just being whimsical - and you obviously don't know anything about autism first hand. On that basis 90% of the cases would have just got better over a seven year period, and without any supportive intervention or any notion that they were even there. Let's be clear our services were being swamped with seriously disabled children.

No, I am not interested in purchasing your cloud-cuckoo land study.

Now, how about the Israeli figures - 8.4 per 10,000 (diagnosis c.2005-6) compared with 76 per 10,000 for your global estimate? Oh, I forgot, they all got better.

Well John Stone if you can’t be bothered to read the paper, you are not really in a position to critique it. The paper considered 5535 pieces of literature and disregarded everything except epidemiological studies on a population basis with clinical diagnostic criteria reported, so I think it was on pretty firm ground. Certainly it would be on much better grounds than perceptions based on school support numbers in the Borough of London.

I get the impression for your comments that somehow you think that ASD is a condition of developmental stasis, rather than of developmental delay. It is indeed the latter and some patients who fit the ASD diagnosis as children (such as myself) can learn to function in society as adults and most would not know they were diagnosed with an ASD.

The conjecture of "universal prevalence" has been current since the late 90s as a counter to the very obvious but daily reality that autism has been running out of control in the population - that tens of thousands of parents and their children were encountering problems which had been much rarer a generation earlier and for which there was almost no historic institutional provision. For instance, c 1999 in the London Borough of Haringey we had <10 cases over the age of 12 in our schools and 100 under the age of 12, being monitored by the same services. You would predict a higher rate in the older group on your basis because more cases would be detected as they got older. I am told that by 2009 the total was >600. In Scottish schools, for which comprehensive figures are kept the numbers have gone up from 820 in 1998 to 9,946 in 2013: it looks like the current rate among younger children is around 1 in 30. I have cited particularly solid data from the Israeli army draft showing that incidence ran at 1 in 1,190 for a mid-80s birth cohort.

I am not surprised that by now you could perform a meta-analysis of papers that project modern rates back into an older population and would not take it to be any more than a convenient bureacratic construct: the manifest failure is finding the actual cases - which is well exemplified by my criticisms of the Brugha survey (about which you have nothing to say). Obviously, a meta-analysis of earlier papers is dependent on the methods of those papers. In the case of Brugha survey it was launched by the NHS as an attack against vaccine concerns: this was against the rules for the publication of national statistics. The polemical intent (and bias) was blatant.

As to "heritability", like "genetic susceptibility", it is a loose concept, it encompasses genetic inheritance and other circumstances. If autism was genetically determined you would expect 100% concordance in identical twins, but it is the divergence which is significant, particular when you consider that mostly they will have been subject to very similar environmental influences (had the same shots at the same time, for example).

Chris Preston
Like John Stone, I was not prepared to pay £30 to read the article you cited, but the free abstract was quite enough for me to see this was just the kind of pseudoscience which has brought epidemiological(statistical) studies into disrepute. "Lies, Damned lies and statistics"

"Results In 2010 there were an estimated 52 million cases of ASDs, equating to a prevalence of 7.6 per 1000 or one in 132 persons. After accounting for methodological variations, there was no clear evidence of a change in prevalence for autistic disorder or other ASDs between 1990 and 2010. Worldwide, there was little regional variation in the prevalence of ASDs. Globally, autistic disorders accounted for more than 58 DALYs per 100 000 population and other ASDs accounted for 53 DALYs per 100 000.
The paper is quite interesting because it finds that when changes in diagnostic criteria are taken into account, there has been no increases in ASDs over the past 2 decades. More astonishingly, it finds that there are no geographic differences in ASD prevalence."

Yeah terrific!! So the entire world was studied for 'geographical differences' and it all averaged out at 1 in 132 persons, so that's OK. Er -What about the 1 in 68 now the 'official' US rate? ....or the UK rate 1 in 55? (Both of these are 6 year old stats.) What 'diagnostic criteria' were eliminated? I assume NO child was actually given a proper psychological/neurological assessment from a qualified practitioner? How much taxpayer's cash was wasted on this waste of time propaganda?

Chris Preston also says (quote)
"Recent research suggests any environmental impact is possibly occurring in the womb."
ABSOLUTELY NOT!!
Recent research was certainly INTENDED to show babies were born autistic. Again vast sums of money were expended across continents, and babies were subjected to extensive tests which tracked their eye contact, or had their heads wired up in special helmets to measure brain activity. The babies 'chosen' for these studies were all siblings of autistic children, giving the 'genetic hypothesis' a head start, (to coin a phrase).

Unfortunately these studies, contrary to expectations, showed nearly all the babies had perfectly normal reactions at two months old. Those who developed autism regressed between two and twenty-four months, (coinciding with most of the vaccine administrations!!) The much vaunted wiring up babies' heads research probably showed the same thing, but the only references I can find, only mention babies aged six months or more. I suspect this research is in the process of being 'buried' along with all the other research with 'unwanted' results. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/11November/Pages/Can-autism-really-be-detected-in-babies.aspx
From above:-
"The study was carried out by researchers from the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, US and was funded by grants from the Simons Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health and support from the Marcus Foundation, the Whitehead Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance.
..... the most interesting aspect of the study. The fact that, contrary to expectations, babies with ASD have unaffected eye contact ability at the two-month mark."

John Stone, that is a very strange response. Having not read the article, you dismiss it because you once incorrectly criticized a paper by one of the authors. This paper is effectively a meta-analysis. Brugha's 2011 paper was not. So your criticism of the methods used cannot be correct.

The paper is quite interesting because it finds that when changes in diagnostic criteria are taken into account, there has been no increases in ASDs over the past 2 decades. More astonishingly, it finds that there are no geographic differences in ASD prevalence.

This has the potential for a fairly radical rethink on the factors contributing to ASDs. Other research has demonstrated there is roughly 50% heritability and the rest is possibly environmental. Recent research suggests any environmental impact is possibly occurring in the womb. If this is correct, then the environmental trigger must be something that is present in all cultures and has been constant since 1990.

Jenny, Dan and Jeanette:-
I posted this FDA link on another thread recently. That argument was about the origins of peanut and pulse allergies. Injection substrates and adjuvents often contain protein remnants from wheat and other crops. The FDA concluded such protein remnants can survive extensive purification processes.

The hypothesis is that protein remnants within injections, can cause allergies in some persons, and gluten is probably the commonest protein in vaccine and other injection adjuvents. Certainly, there has been a huge recent rise in child coeliac cases, alongside a rise in autism, diabetes, asthma and bowel diseases like Crohns.

You will not find any internet references to this, but during the 1970s a life sciences uni department near where I live, researched what happens when Ethyl Mercury from seed dressings is washed into the sea and taken up by marine organisms. The study clearly demonstrated the Ethyl was converted to Methyl, particularly within certain molluscs. It put me off my favourite shellfish!! There was less evidence of mercury within fish and other studied species higher up the food chain, but other studies worldwide confirm a larger presence of mercury within oily fish like Tuna. Where does the mercury come from? Again you will find NOTHING on Google, but mercury does not naturally occur in it's metallic state. The bright orange red ore, Cinnabar, is not particularly common or soluble, although there will be certainly be some in the oceans along with all the other elements. Mercury is used extensively in many industrial processes.

The Ethyl V Methyl Mercury controversy is nothing more than a Red Herring (pardon the pun). They are BOTH dangerous!!

Not having enough biology/chemistry in my background to educate me on how dumb my random speculations might be, a couple that come to mind so undeterred:

Perhaps some fungi prefer gluten (or tolerate it better than other fungi) or something else the seed grouping has in common? And Ceresan seemed to target these fungi effectively?

These seeds do have a similar appearance/structure. I don't know if gluten has anything to do with that, but possibly the seed structure has something to do with what fungi are involved or what fungicides will work best on the surface?

With the highly adaptable nature of some microbes, perhaps there has been a genetic mutation in seed infectors(?) or alteration of the microbiome (if there is one) that lives on these seeds through the use of Ceresan?

Jenny and Jeannette, I wonder about the effect of mercury seed treatments on grain crops as well. It is hard not to notice that the main gluten grains, namely wheat, oats, millet, sorghum, rye, are exactly the ones ceresan was heavily used to treat. what is that all about, if anything?

Re Jenny's interesting theory, I've also wondered, assuming ethylmercury acts as an adjuvant, if the "sticky" proteins like gluten and casein that seem more likely to be associated with immune system problems might be the result of some propensity to drag immune agitating pollutants along with them?

Then, if we do inherit immune response, it seems possible that we could be experiencing multi-generational effects from a brief period of use of ethylmercury on our seeds. It may also be that the act of repeatedly vaccinating infants, who rely on their mother's immunity, with aluminum, mercury, etc. repeatedly "adjuvants" some of these unwanted immune sensitivities.

Obviously at $45 I haven't read it. But if it were to be so indiscriminate as to use the data of the earlier Brugha survey, let alone replicate its methodology - as seems highly likely - I would not be too impressed. I have been deeply unimpressed by the many attempts to project the autism levels of the post 1988 generation in the UK and US on to earlier generations without producing real cases.

Of course, I might be more interested if Brugha had repudiated the earlier survey instead of republishing it in different formats.

Note in the Miller letter supplied before we have reliable figure from Israeli army data that in mid-1980 birth cohort the rate was only 8.4 in 10,000.

"However, other data were obtained
from diagnoses of 17 year olds called up
for conscription by the Israel Draft Board
for military national service. Results
were published in the study “Advancing
Paternal Age and Autism” [3] (the
“Paternal Age” study).
A figure of 8.4:10,000 autism cases
was obtained from a cohort of 132,000
Israeli citizens born during 6 years ending no later than 1988. The Paternal Age
figure suggests that until 1988 there were
few cases of Asperger syndrome in Israel.
The authors state that they had additional
evidence indicating that most of the diagnoses were autism (here meaning “autism” under DSM IV/ICD10 or what is sometimes referred to as “classic,” “typical,”
“infantile,” “Kanner,” “childhood” autism).
The figure is also likely to be more reliable
than others. "

Summary: The correspondence cites evidence from impeccable official Israeli sources of substantial increases in Israel of real cases of autism and Asperger Syndrome since the mid 1980s. Official diagnoses are according to contemporary diagnostic criteria thereby demonstrating the increases are real and not attributable to changing diagnostic criteria, claimed better recognition or improved diagnoses.

Very interesting as ever. Unfortunately you are right that genocide (and this is a slow genocide) has been a ubiquitous feature of human history accompanied often by intellectual justifications of one sort or another since time immemorial. You can even argue whether the genocide is an incidental effect of the policy but it is genocide nevertheless.

You make an interesting point about the Brugha study (a great favourite of Tom Insel) which I have not seen before that any diagnosis paid no attention to the patient's history. But also it looks like the assessors were not qualified to diagnose autism at all. Actually they diagnosed 19 cases of Asperger syndrome (which was re-labelled as Autism before the paper was published) and then claimed that they had missed approx 46-47 cases (despite the very heavy recall for the second phase of the study) and then said their projected 1% figure (for the entire population of England) was correct to a 95% confidence interval. I suppose if you do science like that you can repeat the result as many times as you like!

So it may well be that none of the cases was correctly diagnosed and virtually certain that none had a clinically acceptable diagnosis. It is an excellent additional point that any diagnosis was apparently made out of the context of patient history which was not part of the described methodology.

John

PS I note the comment of "Harry" 16 Dec 2013:

"John Stone,

"Let's be specific about "flawed assessment criteria".

"Brugha took "diagnostic instruments" for standardised diagnoses of autistic conditions and watered them down.

"What does diagnostic "instrument" mean?

"A water or electricity meter is an instrument which is calibrated against a standard to ensure it accurately measures how much water or electricity is used regardless of whose home it is installed in anywhere and can be swapped for another and their readings should accord to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

"A diagnostic instrument serves the same kind of purpose. A key instrument is ADOS [Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS)]. ADOS etc were developed and "calibrated" against large numbers of diagnoses of autistic individuals.

"If you make the measurement criteria less rigorous it is like making the water or electricity meter record 10 times the amount of water or electricity than is used.

"That is how Brugha did it. He watered down the diagnostic criteria so far with no standard or calibration which meant there is no way of knowing if any of the people supposedly diagnosed were even close to having an autistic condition.

Sad Mom cause I was not warned about vacs. Just finished reading "the sanctity of human blood-Vac cin nation I$ NOT Immunization" Rhea, all info documented @ end of book! 1st time voicing I need backup in midst of tet shot w 2nd day fingers going numb- Dr's say No not the Vac. In 2001 school I was working at said get Hep B,-brain wiped...then tricking our (blood clot in spine son @ 9,)into a hep b @ 18 & going Diabetes 1!!! Many others it happen to also! Thanks for pushing!MN

I wonder if the stress of having ceresan applied to it forced a change in the wheat, oats, and barley DNA/Proteins/symbiotic microbiome, or I guess I should just say what were the changes? No way there wouldn't have been changes. Surprised the can doesn't have rye listed on it, also. If ceresan forced changes in phytic acids, lectins, gluten (even before cross breeding, forced heat & cold exposure, and exposure to gamma rays increased the gluten content) - would that mean those plant componants were originally basic plant defense mechanisms that became too strong a poison for the human digestion system to overcome? And if the plant microbiome was altered, with what we know about bacteria in the gut exchanging traits, what a mess.
Does that mean that any plant treated w/chemicals may be going through forced changes that may eventually make them dangerous to eat at some point? One more reason to eat organic.

Jenny Allan: As you already know but I say this to make aware for others, there have been numerous medical papers (buttressing Dan & Mark in their book Age of Autism) going back 50+ years citing the lethal toxicity of ethylmercury-coated seeds being eaten by both farm animals, and their human keepers - with so many dying from ingesting the ethylmercury.

Yet! The Generals at the U.S. CDC and NIH say it is just perfectly fine to INJECT ethylmercury into mothers (thus, their fetuses), and on and on into babies via today's flu shots, and a few other shots, and remains just a "trace" in many vaccines still pushed on parents.

In some time soon I predict, the injecting of this mercury compound will be grounds for criminal medical misconduct.

Just to underline the argument, the stuff in the tin is ETHYL MERCURY, (see middle left of label). This stuff was used to dress seeds in order to prevent fungal contamination. Sadly some farmers in the Middle East died after eating the seeds instead of planting them. The label also says POISON, with appropriate skull and crossbones icons to reinforce the dangers.

For Offit and his cohorts to insist this stuff is perfectly harmless, when injected into little babies and small children is nothing short of criminal. As far as I am concerned the bulk of the blame lies with those Paediatric Associations and doctors like Offit, NOT with those 'parroting' news editors, who simply reproduce those government and pharma press releases. Employed persons know it's professional suicide to express any personal concerns.
We don't have the Klugerman in the UK, but our newspapers and media are just as reliant on Big Pharma advertising.

I've noticed that since Poul Thorsen's legal difficulties, that it is now the custom of Offit and his ilk to make a lot more references to Pichichero ("ethylmercury is the clean and pure mercury that leaves the body right away.") Even the comments in the Washington Post Magazine article on Kennedy have a "Thimerosal and methyl mercury are two entirely different... does not accumulate... blah, blah, blah..." letter writer. A slight change in pharma-strategy that the minions are following closely.

When did media start "sticking up for fill-in-the-blank contaminants dangerous to living things especially human beings" instead of being Watchdog Journalism?
When toxic corporations merged with media...follow the money

Dan, Investigative reporting as you have done on vaccinations for over a decade puts you in tiny group of journalism professionals who actually question medical institutions, on a myriad of critical health & disease topics.

I've just reviewed the current CDC website propaganda (updated to July, 2014) that basically tells the public (and gullible reporters, their lazy editors, and negligent doctors) that ethylmercury injected into babies is virtually a health food, and they repeat over and again a baby getting a thimerosal-laced flu shot is just fine and dandy, totally harmless, better than mother's milk.

Of course CDC NEVER says that well-nourished babies and infants, having good levels of vitamin D, is the key to health. They completely ignore nutrition as they push and promote their toxic, deadly vaccine agenda - this is simply unforgivable.

Also, completely ignored by our mainstream media is the annual lethal toll of SIDS and SUID together being close to 5,000 deaths yearly; SUID stands for Sudden Unexpected Infant Death and SIDS stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, with both peaking at about 6 months, just as the infants are receiving another 8 or 9 vaccines including 2 flu shots (the second at 7 months). But, of course, this is simply coincidence, yep.

Yes .. how do the "mad-hatters" explain away the extraordinary "waste removal" procedures .. requiring haz-mat suits .. that are required by law .. should thimerosal containing vaccines have to be "cleaned up" after spillage?

By the way .. Offit is quoted:

"It doesn't matter what Bobby Kennedy, Jr. does -- the only thing is what the data show,".

Ah, yes .. the only thing that matters is what the data show .. and .. according to Offit .. his data shows a toddler is quite capable of tolerating 100,000 vaccines in his childhood.

Kluger was such a a jerk. Of course, he links to a government (FDA) site and by now it is government information which is in doubt. In this instance it hinges round a woolly citatation of the infamous Pichichero study which was not only poorly conducted, and based on a slender hypothesis but was shortly disproven by Burbacher. Yet this nonsense was also cited recently in the WHO's defence of the use of thimerosal: a very poor study with undiclosed heavy commercial conflicts which ought to be a major embarrassment.

Be that as it may the approved concentration is 250 times the level at which mercury is designated toxic waste, so without a "papal" blessing (no doubt it gets that to) it would require in normal circumstances a hazchem suit to deal with it. Perhaps Kennedy is the first (and possibly only) environmentalist to realise at least this. It may be a bit naieve to conclude that the rest of vaccine science is bona fide given the way manufacturers and governments behaved over this issue, but it is a start.